Several hundred people go to sea together . An error of judgement is made and most of them drown. This mass death grabs the headlines and the small screens. The bereaved families receive what is legally due to them. The tragedy is, in reality, a spectacular number of individual tragedies each one neither necessarily more nor less tragic than the solitary one that befell our neighbours.

But, because of the 'news-value' and because of nothing else whatsoever, the many simultaneous individual tragedies trigger a 'disaster fund'. If you contribute to this, you may feel that you are caring, you may or may not be helping actual people in actual need; you will most certainly be responding to a media circus and probably lining lawyers' pockets too. You will also be pandering to the political-image industry - giving the government the chance to show that it cares, giving its critics the chance to show that they care that the government doesn't care.

If you know someone hurt by disaster then help them; if not then save your money until a disaster does happen to someone you know. Given the present state of neglect and complacency in our basic services, the chance will come soon enough. Meanwhile try to push the authorities, official and otherwise, into paying for safety standards, and human well-being generally, as lavishly as they pay for self-promotion. That would be quite something to achieve.

TV exposure is not a valid measure of importance. What actual people actually experience matters more than feeling shocked and virtuous at a safe distance.